Ini Billie, Uyo
President Muhammadu Buhari has re-appointed Prof. Ememabasi Bassey as the Chief Medical Director at the University of Uyo Teaching Hospital (UUTH), Akwa Ibom State.
While praising President Buhari for the re-appointment, Bassey pledged to justify the confidence reposed in him and listed the improvement of clinical services, infrastructural development, facelift of the premises and refurbishment of all departments as part of his first term achievement.
Speaking after a tour of the medical facility to mark his second term, the CMD said his goal is to make UUTH more patient friendly.
“Almost all the buildings we met on the ground are at various stages of completion and some are already completed. The GOPD, was completed and furnished. We have completed the radio diagnostics (CT scan) building. The laboratory block which we met at the earthing level, has been completed. The molecular laboratory building was completed.
“We embarked on a water expansion project from 40,000 litres to 180,000 litres daily. Our 16 bedded Intensive Care Unit completed both neonatal and paediatric, with a dedicated generator and solar, courtesy of the Covid-19 intervention fund. We refurbished the dialysis unit and bought four new machines
“We want to make the hospital more patient-friendly. We have introduced in phases, a new electronic software, EMR, to transform the UUTH (which is a public hospital) into a paperless hospital in two years. We will introduce a world-class corporate clinic for VIPs, where the rich people who want to be specially attended to by the doctors can have such service, but that comes with a cost,” he stated.
However, the former Commissioner for Health in the state lamented that power supply has been the greatest challenge for the hospital.
He stated that on the assumption of office in 2018, he made efforts to connect the hospital to the national grid, and had committed millions of Naira to acquire armoured cables.
According to him, the efforts did not yield results as they still experienced erratic power supply leading to the dependence on generators which he said were very expensive.
He urged all the relevant authorities, the state government, NDDC and other corporate bodies to assist the hospital to ensure seamless service delivery
“Power is the major challenge we face; I have tried to talk about power. Unfortunately, public power has been very poor and we have been running the hospital totally on generators. This is very expensive.
“We use about 1,500 litres of diesel in a month, and diesel now costs about N850, N900 per litre. Then, multiply 1500litres of diesel by 850 or N900 every month, that gives you an idea of how many millions we expend every month.
“Over 40 per cent of the revenue of this hospital is expended on power alone and that’s a huge cause for concern in our service delivery. This is a cry for help, we need help, we are not asking for money, we are only asking for whatever intervention agencies that are there; such as the NDDC, and the Akwa Ibom state government can do, let them go ahead, we are serving Akwa Ibom people, 95% of our patients are Akwa Ibom people,” he stated.
The CMD decried the high level of vandalism and theft in the facility despite the security personnel on the premises and challenged the security men manning the hospital to demonstrate more dedication to assigned duties.
He mentioned that the hospital has concluded plans to inaugurate a hospital endowment fund for social services.
“Like in our dialysis centre, we were forced to bring down the cost of dialysis as part of our social services. Before now you needed about N35, 000 for a session, but when we realized that it was a very major cost to our patients, we had to reduce it to N25,000 because some people have to do it twice or thrice a week.
“In that unit, we buy consumables of over Two Million Naira and at the end of the month that unit would only generate a little above One Million Naira, you see, we are running at a loss. We have lost millions of Naira through waivers, but we see it as part of our social services and the hospital endowment fund will help us sustain it,” he explained.